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German jobless rate falls once more

The jobless rate in Europe’s strongest economy has been falling steeply for years and the latest figures released by the Federal Labor Agency show that unemployment figures are at their lowest since reunification.

The unemployment rate for September fell to 5.5 percent from the 5.7 percent recorded in August, continuing the trend of record lows that have been achieved in recent years. The current rate is the lowest since German reunification in 1990.

"The job market is continuing to see positive development," labor agency head Detlef Scheele said upon the release of the figures in Nuremberg. "Employment continues to grow and the demand of businesses for new workers increased strongly this month."

According to the figures, the number of unemployed people in Germany today stands at 2.449 million, almost 100,000 less than were recorded as jobless in August. Compared with this month last year, there are 159,000 less people without work in Germany.

In the seasonally adjusted figures — which attempt to remove the influences of predictable seasonal patterns — the trend is also downward, with 23,000 less on the jobless list than one month ago.

The wider picture

The methods used by the German Federal Labor Agency are different from those of the International Labor Organization (ILO). By those figures, Germany's rate of unemployment stands at 3.7 percent, with the Czech Republic the only EU country with a lower rate.

By those figures, the seasonally adjusted Euro area unemployment rate — comprising the 19 Eurozone nations — stands at 9.1 percent, the lowest level since February 2009. The unemployment rate for the 28 nations of the EU as a whole stands at 7.7 percent, with Greece's unemployment rate of 21.7 percent still ranking as the highest in the bloc.